“Guess it was the clothes again,” said Kinney, as he began to wash his tins
and dishes after the dinner was over, and the men had gone back to their
work. “I could see 'em eyin' you over when they first came in, and I could
see that they didn't exactly like the looks of 'em. It would wear off in
time, but it _takes_ time for it to wear off; and it had to go pretty rusty
for a start-off. Well, I don't know as it makes much difference to you,
does it?”
“Oh, I thought we got along very well,” said Bartley, with a careless yawn.
“There wasn't much chance to get acquainted.” Some of the loggers were as
handsome and well-made as he, and were of as good origin and traditions,
though he had some advantages of training. But his two-button cutaway, his
well-fitting trousers, his scarf with a pin in it, had been too much for
these young fellows in their long 'stoga boots and flannel shirts. They
looked at him askance, and despatched their meal with more than their
wonted swiftness, and were off again into the woods without any
demonstrations of satisfaction in Bartley's presence.
He had perceived their grudge, for he had felt it in his time. But it did
not displease him; he had none of the pain with which Kinney, who had so
long bragged of him to the loggers, saw that his guest was a failure.
“I guess they'll come out all right in the end,” he said. In this warm
atmosphere, after the gross and heavy dinner he had eaten, he yawned again
and again. He folded his overcoat into a pillow for his bench and lay down,
and lazily watched Kinney about his work. Presently he saw Kinney seated on
a block of wood beside the stove, with his elbow propped in one hand, and
holding a magazine, out of which he was reading; he wore spectacles, which
gave him a fresh and interesting touch of grotesqueness. Bartley found that
an empty barrel had been placed on each side of him, evidently to keep him
from rolling off his bench.
“Hello!” he said. “Much obliged to you, Kinney. I haven't been taken such
good care of since I can remember. Been asleep, haven't I?”
“About an hour,” said Kinney, with a glance at the clock, and ignoring his
agency in Bartley's comfort.
“Food for the brain!” said Bartley, sitting up. “I should think so. I've
dreamt a perfect New American Cyclopaedia, and a pronouncing gazetteer
thrown in.”
“Is that so?” said Kinney, as if pleased with the suggestive character of
his cookery, now established by eminent experiment.
Bartley yawned a yawn of satisfied sleepiness, and rubbed his hand over
his face. “I suppose,” he said, “if I'm going to write anything about Camp
Kinney, I had better see all there is to see.”
“Well, yes, I presume you had,” said Kinney. “We'll go over to where
they're cuttin', pretty soon, and you can see all there is in an hour. But
I presume you'll want to see it so as to ring in some description, hey?
Well, that's all right. But what you going to do with it, when you've done
it, now you're out of the Free Press?”
“Oh, I shouldn't have printed it in the Free Press, anyway Coals to
Newcastle, you know. I'll tell you what I think I'll do, Kinney: I'll get
my outlines, and then you post me with a lot of facts,--queer characters,
accidents, romantic incidents, snowings-up, threatened starvation,
adventures with wild animals,--and I can make something worth while; get
out two or three columns, so they can print it in their Sunday edition. And
then I'll take it up to Boston with me, and seek my fortune with it.”
“Well, sir, I'll do it,” said Kinney, fired with the poetry of the idea.
“I'll post you! Dumn 'f I don't wish _I_ could write! Well, I _did_ use to
scribble once for an agricultural paper; but I don't call that writin'.
I've set down, well, I guess as much as sixty times, to try to write out
what I know about loggin'--”
“Hold on!” cried Bartley, whipping out his notebook. “That's first-rate.
That'll do for the first line in the head,--_What I Know About
Logging_,--large caps. Well!”
Kinney shut his magazine, and took his knee between his hands, closing one
of his eyes in order to sharpen his recollection. He poured forth a stream
of reminiscence, mingled observation, and personal experience. Bartley
followed him with his pencil, jotting down points, striking in sub-head
lines, and now and then interrupting him with cries of “Good!” “Capital!”
“It's a perfect mine,--it's a mint! By Jove!” he exclaimed, “I'll make
_six_ columns of this! I'll offer it to one of the magazines, and it'll
come out illustrated! Go on, Kinney.”
“Hark!” said Kinney, craning his neck forward to listen. “I thought I heard
sleigh-bells. But I guess it wa'n't. Well, sir, as I was sayin', they
fetched that fellow into camp with both feet frozen to the knees--Dumn 'f
it _wa'n't_ bells!”
He unlimbered himself, and hurried to the door at the other end of the
cabin, which he opened, letting in a clear block of the afternoon sunshine,
and a gush of sleigh-bell music, shot with men's voices, and the cries and
laughter of women.
“Well, sir,” said Kinney, coming back and making haste to roll down his
sleeves and put on his coat. “_Here's_ a nuisance! A whole party of
folks--two sleigh-loads--right _on_ us. I don't know who they _be_, or
where they're from. But I know where I wish they _was_. Well, of course,
it's natural they should want to see a loggin'-camp,” added Kinney, taking
himself to task for his inhospitable mind, “and there ain't any harm in it.
But I wish they'd give a fellow a _little_ notice!”
The voices and bells drew nearer, but Kinney seemed resolved to observe the
decorum of not going to the door till some one knocked.
“Kinney! Kinney! Hello, Kinney!” shouted a man's voice, as the bells hushed
before the door, and broke into a musical clash when one of the horses
tossed his head.
“Well, sir,” said Kinney, rising, “I guess it's old Willett himself. He's
the owner; lives up to Portland, and been threatening to come down here all
winter, with a party of friends. You just stay still,” he added; and he
paid himself the deference which every true American owes himself in his
dealings with his employer: he went to the door very deliberately, and made
no haste on account of the repeated cries of “Kinney! Kinney!” in which
others of the party outside now joined.
When he opened the door again, the first voice saluted him with a roar of
laughter. “Why, Kinney, I began to think you were dead!”
“No, sir,” Bartley heard Kinney reply, “it takes more to kill me than you
suppose.” But now he stepped outside, and the talk became unintelligible.
Finally Bartley heard what was imaginably Mr. Willett's voice saying,
“Well, let's go in and have a look at it now”; and with much outcry and
laughter the ladies were invisibly helped to dismount, and presently the
whole party came stamping and rustling in.
Bartley's blood tingled. He liked this, and he stood quite self-possessed,
with his thumbs in his waistcoat pockets and his elbows dropped, while Mr.
Willett advanced in a friendly way.
“Ah, Mr. Hubbard! Kinney told us you were in here, and asked me to
introduce myself while he looked after the horses. My name's Willett. These
are my daughters; this is Mrs. Macallister, of Montreal; Mrs. Witherby, of
Boston; Miss Witherby, and Mr. Witherby. _You_ ought to know each other;
Mr. Hubbard is the editor of the Equity Free Press. Mr. Witherby, of The
Boston Events, Mr. Hubbard. Oh, and _Mr._ Macallister.”
Bartley bowed to the Willett and Witherby ladies, and shook hands with Mr.
Witherby, a large, solemn man, with a purse-mouth and tight rings of white
hair, who treated him with the pomp inevitable to the owner of a city
newspaper in meeting a country editor.
At the mention of his name, Mr. Macallister, a slight little straight man,
in a long ulster and a sealskin cap, tiddled farcically forward on his
toes, and, giving Bartley his hand, said, “Ah, haow d'e-do, _haow_ d'e-do!”
Mrs. Macallister fixed upon him the eye of the flirt who knows her man. She
was of the dark-eyed English type; her eyes were very large and full, and
her smooth black hair was drawn flatly backward, and fastened in a knot
just under her dashing fur cap. She wore a fur sack, and she was equipped
against the cold as exquisitely as her Southern sisters defend themselves
from the summer. Bits of warm color, in ribbon and scarf, flashed out here
and there; when she flung open her sack, she showed herself much more
lavishly buttoned and bugled and bangled than the Americans. She sat down
on the movable bench which Bartley had vacated, and crossed her feet, very
small and saucy, even in their arctics, on a stick of fire-wood, and cast
up her neat profile, and rapidly made eyes at every part of the interior.
“Why, it's delicious, you know. I never saw anything so comfortable. I want
to spend the rest of me life here, you know.” She spoke very far down in
her throat, and with a rising inflection in each sentence. “I'm going to
have a quarrel with you, Mr. Willett, for not telling me what a delightful
surprise you had for us here. Oh, but I'd no idea of it, I assure you!”
“Well, I'm glad you like it, Mrs. Macallister,” said Mr. Willett, with the
clumsiness of American middle-age when summoned to say something gallant.
“If I'd told you what a surprise I had for you, it wouldn't have been one.”
“Oh, it's no good your trying to get out of it _that_ way,” retorted the
beauty. “There he comes now! I'm really in love with him, you know,” she
said, as Kinney opened the door and came hulking forward.
Nobody said anything at once, but Bartley laughed finally, and ventured,
“Well, I'll propose for you to Kinney.”
“Oh, I dare say!” cried the beauty, with a lively effort of wit. “Mr.
Kinney, I have fallen in love with your camp, d' ye know?” she added, as
Kinney drew near, “and I'm beggin' Mr. Willett to let me come and live here
among you.”
“Well, ma'am,” said Kinney, a little abashed at this proposition, “you
couldn't do a better thing for your health, I _guess_.”
The proprietor of The Boston Events turned about, and began to look
over the arrangements of the interior; the other ladies went with him,
conversing, in low tones. “These must be the places where the men sleep,”
they said, gazing at the bunks.
“We must get Kinney to explain things to us,” said Mr. Willett a little
restlessly.
Mrs. Macallister jumped briskly to her feet. “Oh, yes, do, Mr. Willett,
make him explain everything! I've been tryin' to coax it out of him, but
he's _such_ a tease!”
Kinney looked very sheepish in this character, and Mrs. Macallister hooked
Bartley to her side for the tour of the interior. “I can't let you away
from me, Mr. Hubbard; your friend's so satirical, I'm afraid of him. Only
fancy, Mr. Willett! He's been talkin' to _me_ about brain foods! I know
he's makin' fun of me; and it isn't kind, is it, Mr. Hubbard?”
She did not give the least notice to the things that the others looked at,
or to Kinney's modest lecture upon the manners and customs of the loggers.
She kept a little apart with Bartley, and plied him with bravadoes, with
pouts, with little cries of suspense. In the midst of this he heard Mr.
Willett saying, “You ought to get some one to come and write about this for
your paper, Witherby.” But Mrs. Macallister was also saying something,
with a significant turn of her floating eyes, and the thing that concerned
Bartley, if he were to make his way among the newspapers in Boston, slipped
from his grasp like the idea which we try to seize in a dream. She made
sure of him for the drive to the place which they visited to see the men
felling the trees, by inviting him to a seat at her side in the sleigh;
this crowded the others, but she insisted, and they all gave way, as people
must, to the caprices of a pretty woman. Her coquetries united British
wilfulness to American nonchalance, and seemed to have been graduated
to the appreciation of garrison and St. Lawrence River steamboat and
watering-place society. The Willett ladies had already found it necessary
to explain to the Witherby ladies that they had met her the summer before
at the sea-side, and that she had stopped at Portland on her way to
England; they did not know her very well, but some friends of theirs did;
and their father had asked her to come with them to the camp. They added
that the Canadian ladies seemed to expect the gentlemen to be a great deal
more attentive than ours were. They had known as little what to do with Mr.
Macallister's small-talk and compliments as his wife's audacities, but they
did not view Bartley's responsiveness with pleasure. If Mrs. Macallister's
arts were not subtle, as Bartley even in the intoxication of her preference
could not keep from seeing, still, in his mood, it was consoling to
be singled out by her; it meant that even in a logging-camp he was
recognizable by any person of fashion as a good-looking, well-dressed man
of the world. It embittered him the more against Marcia, while, in some
sort, it vindicated him to himself.
The early winter sunset was beginning to tinge the snow with crimson, when
the party started back to camp, where Kinney was to give them supper; he
had it greatly on his conscience that they should have a good time, and he
promoted it as far as hot mince-pie and newly fried doughnuts would go. He
also opened a few canned goods, as he called some very exclusive sardines
and peaches, and he made an entirely fresh pot of tea, and a pan of
soda-biscuit. Mrs. Macallister made remarks across her plate which were
for Bartley alone; and Kinney, who was seriously waiting upon his guests,
refused to respond to Bartley's joking reference to himself of some
questions and comments of hers.
After supper, when the loggers had withdrawn to the other end of the long
hut, she called out to Kinney, “Oh, _do_ tell them to smoke: we shall not
mind it at all, I assure you. Can't some of them do something? Sing or
dance?”
Kinney unbent a little at this. “There's a first-class clog-dancer among
them; but he's a little stuck up, and I don't know as you could get him to
dance,” he said in a low tone.
“What a bloated aristocrat!” cried the lady. “Then the only thing is for us
to dance first. Can they play?”
“One of 'em can whistle like a bird,--he can whistle like a whole band,”
answered Kinney, warming. “And of course the Kanucks can fiddle.”
“And what are Kanucks? Is _that_ what you call us Canadians?”
“Well, ma'am, it aint quite the thing to do,” said Kinney, penitently.
“It isn't at _all_ the thing to do! Which are the Kanucks?”
She rose, and went forward with Kinney, in her spoiled way, and addressed
a swarthy, gleaming-eyed young logger in French. He answered with a smile
that showed all his white teeth, and turned to one of his comrades; then
the two rose, and got violins out of the bunks, and came forward. Others of
their race joined them, but the Yankees hung gloomily back; they clearly
did not like these liberties, this patronage.
“I shall have your clog-dancer on his feet yet, Mr. Kinney,” said Mrs.
Macallister, as she came back to her place.
The Canadians began to play and sing those gay, gay airs of old France
which they have kept unsaddened through all the dark events that have
changed the popular mood of the mother country; they have matched words
to them in celebration of their life on the great rivers and in the vast
forests of the North, and in these blithe barcaroles and hunting-songs
breathes the joyous spirit of a France that knows neither doubt nor
care,--France untouched by Revolution or Napoleonic wars; some of the airs
still keep the very words that came over seas with them two hundred years
ago. The transition to the dance was quick and inevitable; a dozen slim
young fellows were gliding about behind the players, pounding the hard
earthen floor, and singing in time.
“Oh, come, come!” cried the beauty, rising and stamping impatiently with
her little foot, “suppose we dance, too.”
She pulled Bartley forward by the hand; her husband followed with the
taller Miss Willett; two of the Canadians, at the instance of Mrs.
Macallister, came forward and politely asked the honor of the other young
ladies' hands in the dance; their temper was infectious, and the cotillon
was in full life before their partners had time to wonder at their consent.
Mrs. Macallister could sing some of the Canadian songs; her voice, clear
and fresh, rang through those of the men, while in at the window, thrown
open for air, came the wild cries of the forest,--the wail of a catamount,
and the solemn hooting of a distant owl.
“Isn't it jolly good fun?” she demanded, when the figure was finished; and
now Kinney went up to the first-class clog-dancer, and prevailed with him
to show his skill. He seemed to comply on condition that the whistler
should furnish the music; he came forward with a bashful hauteur, bridling
stiffly like a girl, and struck into the laborious and monotonous jig which
is, perhaps, our national dance. He was exquisitely shaped, and as he
danced he suppled more and more, while the whistler warbled a wilder and
swifter strain, and kept time with his hands. There was something that
stirred the blood in the fury of the strain and dance. When it was done,
Mrs. Macallister caught off her cap and ran round among the spectators
to make them pay; she excused no one, and she gave the money to Kinney,
telling him to get his loggers something to keep the cold out.
“I should say whiskey, if I were in the Canadian bush,” she suggested.
“Well, _I_ guess we sha'n't say anything of that sort in _this_ camp,” said
Kinney.
She turned upon Bartley, “I know Mr. Hubbard is dying to do something.
Do something, Mr. Hubbard!” Bartley looked up in surprise at this
interpretation of his tacit wish to distinguish himself before her. “Come,
sing us some of your student songs.”
Bartley's vanity had confided the fact of his college training to her,
and he was really thinking just then that he would like to give them a
serio-comic song, for which he had been famous with his class. He borrowed
the violin of a Kanuck, and, sitting down, strummed upon it banjo-wise. The
song was one of those which is partly spoken and acted; he really did it
very well; but the Willett and Witherby ladies did not seem to understand
it quite; and the gentlemen looked as if they thought this very undignified
business for an educated American.
Mrs. Macallister feigned a yawn, and put up her hand to hide it. “_Oh_,
what a styupid song!” she said. She sprang to her feet, and began to put
on her wraps. The others were glad of this signal to go, and followed her
example. “Good by!” she cried, giving her hand to Kinney. “_I_ don't think
your ideas are ridiculous. I think there's no end of good sense in them, I
assure you. I hope you won't leave off that regard for the brain in your
cooking. Good by!” She waved her hand to the Americans, and then to the
Kanucks, as she passed out between their respectfully parted ranks. “Adieu,
messieurs!” She merely nodded to Bartley; the others parted from him
coldly, as he fancied, and it seemed to him that he had been made
responsible for that woman's coquetries, when he was conscious, all the
time, of having forborne even to meet them half-way. But this was not
so much to his credit as he imagined. The flirt can only practise her
audacities safely by grace of those upon whom she uses them, and if men
really met them half-way there could be no such tiling as flirting.